1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of determining a position of an obstacle (hereinafter, referred to as an “obstacle position determining method”), an apparatus of determining a position of an obstacle (hereinafter, referred to as an “obstacle postion determining apparatus”), a parking assist method, and a parking assist system.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In general, a blind spot which cannot be confirmed with a mirror or eyes generally exists when parking a vehicle, and it is highly concerned that the vehicle suffers from a contact accident due to an object which is present in the blind spot.
In order to alleviate such a problem, a conventional parking assist system determines a position of an obstacle and informs a driver of the position of the obstacle in which a plurality of ultrasonic wave sensors are used in such a manner that signals sent from the ultrasonic wave sensors are reflected from the obstacle and the reflected signals are received by the ultrasonic wave sensors so as to determine the position of the obstacle.
However, there is a limit in the conventional parking assist system, a conventional obstacle position determination apparatus, or the like in that when an obstacle is present in an area where signal sending regions of the plurality of sensors overlap, all the reflected signals from respective sensors are received which makes it difficult to determine a sensor, of which the front region is positioned more closely to the obstacle. Due to this limit, the driver may merely obtain information in an alarm level which indicates that an obstacle is present without recognizing the correct position of the obstacle. Thus, the driver cannot obtain correct information as to which direction the vehicle should be driven to in order to avoid the obstacle.